CONTENT MARKETING
Chapter 1:
Why Content Marketing Matters
If you’re at all interested in digital
marketing and in making a name for
your brand online, then it is crucial that
you understand how to properly make
use of content marketing. Content
marketing is currently one of the biggest
trends in digital marketing as a
whole and is an area that many website owners and brands are investing in
heavily right now thanks to the impressive returns that they are seeing.
While there is no such thing as a ‘magic bullet’ when it comes to getting your
brand known and encouraging sales, content marketing is perhaps the
closest thing to such a notion and can help you to drastically increase your
visibility as well as your authority and trust.
But content marketing is a complex and broad term that encompasses a
number of different strategies and activities. In order for it to be successful,
you need to have a good understanding of what it is, how it works and how
you can best adapt it to work for your particular brand.
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What’s more, is that you need to know where content marketing is heading in
the near future and how you can ensure that the work you put in now keeps
on paying dividends long into the future. For all that and more, keep reading.
What you will learn in this book is how content marketing works, why it is
crucial for your business and how to harness it in a way that completely
transforms your success.
You’ll receive a completely Content Marketing Champion that you can adapt
to your own brand and that you can use to build immense authority and a
huge list of readers. Once you can fully utilize this key aspect of your
marketing, you’ll find that it helps you to create something that is much
bigger than a simple brand. You become a movement. And that’s how you
achieve the maximum measure of success.
What is Content Marketing?
Before we dive in any further, it of
course makes sense to simply ask
ourselves: what is content marketing?
There’s a chance you know the term
already but I ask that you bear with me
in case there are aspects of the
definition that you have missed out.
At its most basic, content marketing is the process of using content in order
to market a website. This means that you could consider SEO to be a form of
content marketing – in as much as you are creating content that Google will
be able to index. This way, your content is making your site easier to find and
thus it is a form of marketing.
Content marketing can also be seen as a crucial aspect of social media
marketing. Most social media marketing strategies involve sharing posts
and links on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and very often these will
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include content that is on the brand’s own website. Take a look at the highly
popular Facebook Page IFL Science. This page mainly posts science news
by sharing blog posts from its own site. This ensures that liking the page
provides readers with a constant stream of interesting information and it helps
to gain more likes as a result.
But the objective of content marketing goes beyond simply getting people to
your website. All these uses for content demonstrate one key fact: the internet
runs on content. The reason that people search for topics on Google is
because they are looking for either information or entertaining. Both those
things are examples of content.
By filling your site with great posts, you are giving people a reason to like
your Facebook page. What’s more, is that you are giving Google a reason to
add you to its search results. Google wants to pair its visitors with the top
sites and resources on the web. In doing so, that is how it is able to provide
value and that is what will keep people coming back.
But if your site is filled with great content, then you are also giving people a
good reason to come to your site directly. In other words, content marketing
that is good enough will eventually cut out the middle man. Content marketing
that is good enough will encourage visitors to bookmark your site and to visit it
regularly as part of their routine in order to see what new posts you’ve
uploaded and what more they can learn.
In other words, you are filling your site with value.
Once someone is visiting your site directly and without being encouraged to
do so by an advert or by Google, then they have evolved beyond being a
simple visitor. Now they are a fan. They are actively choosing to engage with
your brand, so they must really like the type of content you provide, your style
of writing or the topic that you cover.
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This takes your site to a whole different level and that’s not even the whole
story…
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Chapter 2: Why Content Marketing is
Crucial for Selling
Content marketing doesn’t only ensure
greater loyalty and give you a big
audience to sell to though: it also gives
you more impact and authority.
Think about your favorite celebrity.
Someone that you really look up to,
whose work you admire and who you
think has got their life up together. Imagine if they recommended a certain
item of clothing, or a certain health supplement. Would you be more likely to
buy it?
The answer for the general population is a resounding yes. This is why the
shoe that Under Armor designed with huge online influencer Dwayne
Johnson was the fastest selling of 2017. The shoe: The Rock Delta, had the
considerable advantage of being recommended by someone with a huge
audience and a huge amount of authority and trust within that community.
The objective of content marketing is essentially to build that kind of trust and
authority directly. Instead of working with an authority, you are going to
become that authority.
Take a look at someone like Tim Ferriss, Pat Flynn or even Tony Robbins.
These are people who offer value through their blogs and their videos so that
when they have something to sell, they have millions of people waiting to buy
from them. Everything they release is a hit, which is because of the
groundwork they put in at the start. The same goes for YouTube personality
Elliott Hulse, or bodybuilding site T-Nation.com. These are sites with fans not
just readers.
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How Content Marketing Creates Fans and Buyers
We’ve seen the basics of how
content marketing works, but
now let’s dive into it in a little
more detail. What is the
precise process that converts
a first-time visitor into a rabid
fan? How does content
marketing take someone from
a ‘cold lead’ all the way to a ‘buyer’?
Well first, the content is what will help your new visitor to discover your site.
They will search for a specific topic and your site will come up in the search
results, or perhaps they will see a post from you on Facebook that a friend
has liked. Either way, they’ll then click on the link and read your site but this
alone isn’t going to be enough to turn them into a real fan.
In fact, they’ll likely just leave your site and not come back! They will
probably scroll down the page so fast they don’t even see your logo and
then they’ll just navigate away as soon as they’re done.
Days, weeks or months will pass and the same thing will happen a couple
more times. By coincidence, they will end up on your site. It’s at this point
they’ll start to recognize some of your branding and they’ll note that you are
running a pretty decent gig here. They’ll make a note of the name of your
brand and the next time they search on Google they’ll look for your site’s
name in the search results.
If they continue to be impressed, then they’ll eventually consider actually
bookmarking your page or just occasionally checking the homepage to see
what’s new. It’s at this point that they might subscribe or that they might
follow you on Facebook or Twitter.
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And it’s at this point that you just took your visitor from being a cold lead to
being a very warm lead.
And now, when you come to sell something, they will be highly likely to be
interested. Not only will they be the first to hear about it, because they’re
reading your content regularly; now they’ll also know who you are, they’ll trust
you to be able to deliver high quality content and they’ll know that you know
your stuff.
Imagine if you read the website of a photographer every week and the
photographer shared tips about how they create the perfect photos, what
tools they use and how every job is important to them.
If you read this often enough, you’ll likely come to respect that
photographer’s point of view and you’ll know at least that they have a deep
understanding of their craft and they take it seriously.
Now imagine that you need someone to take some photos for your website,
your wedding or another event. Who would you consider asking first?
(Assuming they were local.)
This is the power of content marketing and it’s something that you can see
used effectively in countless sales funnels and by many other marketer.
Think of it this way: if you landed on a website and the very first thing it did
was to try and sell you something, what would you do? You’d probably leave!
You never asked to buy something and more to the point, you have no
reason to trust the person selling. It looks like spam and you leave.
This is considerably different from being a long-time reader of a blog and
then learning that the writer also has a book out. This is a much less invasive
way of discovering a product and more to the point, you know something
about that blogger, you know that they know their stuff and you can trust
them. They have built a brand through their content marketing and that
means you’ll feel much more comfortable handing over your cash.
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I like to think of this in terms of dating. Trying to sell to someone without first
establishing trust and authority is just like approaching a stranger in the street
and asking if they’ll come home with you! They don’t know you, they don’t
trust you and they’re be annoyed at the interruption to their day.
But if you have done the ground work by chatting, dating and demonstrating
you’re a nice person, then you’ll earn the right to ask them home.
An Example: Thai Lopez
Let’s take a look at one example: Thai
Lopez.
Thai is a controversial digital marketer
and a house-hold name thanks to his
series of adverts that show on YouTube before other videos. He is
responsible for the ‘hear in my garage’ meme that has been doing the
rounds online and if you’ve spent any time online, chances are you will have
encountered him.
While you might find Thai’s in-your-face marketing strategies to be irritating
(like most people do), the reality is that they work. We know they work,
otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to make so many using the profits from
his previous videos!
The success partly comes from how annoying the videos are. Thai is bragging
about his sports cars and books and his attempts at authenticity are so thinly
veiled that you can almost feel the slime. This is all part of his strategy of
course – as Trump showed us, no publicity is bad publicity. Being irritating
and controversial gets people talking and that is great for business.
But what you can also learn from Thai is a pretty immaculate example of
content marketing.
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Content marketing does not just mean blog posts. It also means video,
pictures and really anything that can be considered content.
The first video from Thai then is an example of content. This is the point at
which the viewer is a cold lead. They didn’t ask to be watching this and they
have no reason to want to stay tuned. The first thing Thai does then is to
establish authority. He does this by showing off his cars, by referencing the
fact that he gave a TED talk and by talking about money a fair amount. Now
the audience knows he knows his stuff. He shares some of his personal backstory too in order to establish trust.
The next thing he does though is to talk about another video: a free video
that lasts over 50 minutes. This is important because the video is not only
apparently great value (50 minutes for free!) but is also an opportunity for
him to build more trust and authority.
If Thai were to tell you to buy from him as soon as you watched the YouTube
video, you probably wouldn’t. You’d ignore the video and carry on with your
life. At this point, he hasn’t done enough to prove himself to encourage you to
buy from him.
But now imagine that you’ve just watched 50 minutes of content on top of
that advert. Now you know just what value (I guess…) Thai is able to
provide. You like what he has to say, you trust him and you’ve been given
more reason to consider him an authority in his field.
It’s only at this point that Thai will now begin to try and sell to his audience.
By doing this, he has now earned the right to sell and the audience is more
interested in buying from him. They’re hopefully now convinced that he is a
money-making guru and if they want to achieve some of his success, they
might consider investing in one of his books!
This is a typical ‘sales funnel’, which in turn is any system that is designed
to take someone from their first encounter with a brand all the way to
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wanting to buy from the creator. A funnel will almost always start with
something free – a free taster – and then encourage more and more
engagement right up until the point where it tries to make a sale.
But this sales funnel – like all sales funnels – also relies heavily on content,
making it an example of content marketing as well. If you want to build trust
and generate sales from your own website or blog, then you need to mimic
this process. And it starts with amazing content.
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Chapter 3: The Logistics and the Numbers
Now you know what content marketing
is, why it matters and how other
creators are using it to grow their
visibility and their trust, all while making
more sales.
The next question is what you actually
need to do on a day-to-day basis to grow your site and build that trust.
How often do you need to post? Which types of content should you provide?
How long is an ideal blog post? That’s what we’ll be examining in this
chapter.
Types of Content Marketing
The most popular type of content
marketing by far is written. In other
words, content marketing here involves
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writing regular blog posts and articles and then posting them on a blog or
website. This provides a base where your viewers can come to enjoy your
content and it will allow you to benefit from the SEO that comes from
regularly adding content to your website. It also means you can then share
your posts on social media in order to build a following that way and to direct
even more traffic to your site.
But written content is just one form of content marketing. Other options
include:
Video
Live video
Podcast
Images
Quizzes/tests/games
Music
And even within the most basic written version of content marketing, you still
have many different forms: from the trashy, short-form humorous content that
is shared on Buzzfeed, to the more in-depth, challenging pieces shared on
something like Brain Pickings. Then you have content that is ‘evergreen’
(meaning it will last forever) and content that is very contemporary and
temporal – such as breaking news.
Each different kind of content has its advantages and disadvantages, and
depending on your audience and your goals, you are going to take different
approach to regularity, length etc.
But for the most part, it is likely safe to assume that you are going to want
some form of blog. Even if you make video marketing a big push, you will
likely do this in addition to a blog. For that reason, we will assume for now
that this is the route you are going to take.
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In that case, we can make some useful suggestions as to the regularity and
methods you’ll use for publishing your content.
Frequency, Length and More Factors
Frequency
If you want to build a following on your
blog, then you need to be frequent and
consistent. This is an absolute priority as
failure to post regularly will quickly result
in your visitors losing interest and no
longer looking up your site. If they check
several times and your site is the same as it was last time they looked, then
this means that they will be likely to give up.
The very minimum you should be posting then is once a week. If you do this,
then you should also post on a consistent day and make sure that you are
always on time.
But while you can get by on one post a week, this is very much not the best
strategy. What is far preferable is that you aim to produce multiple blog posts
in a single day. Failing that, you should aim for at least one blog post a day.
That might sound like a lot but the proof is in the pudding. Think of any of the
top blogs that you like to read on a regular basis: how many blog posts do
they have? In all likelihood, they probably post multiple times in a single day
or at least a single time a day.
If you are an entrepreneur hoping to make money from a website or a blog –
hoping to earn enough that you can quit your day job – then the main activity
you should be engaging in is writing your content and then promoting your
content.
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And if you want this to be your full-time job, then you need to treat it like a
full-time job. You can’t get a full-time salary from 2 hours of work every
week. So, learn to write well and learn to write fast.
Length
In terms of length, most SEOs and
marketing experts now recommend
aiming for longer-form content.
Anything that’s 1,500 words and over
will be able to provide much greater
depth and much more insight
compared with something that is just
500 words.
As such, these longer posts tend to be better at creating trust and authority
and they also tend to be shared more. They additionally have a greater
chance of ending up in Google’s curated ‘news’ section – which is fantastic
for increased visibility and more visitors.
The only problem is that writing one or more posts a day at 1,500 words
each becomes a rather impossible task for most brands and most bloggers
even. Thus a better strategy might be to aim for shorter content – perhaps
500-700 words – for most posts and then to write a few longer ones.
This also has another added benefit, in that it will allow you to keep your
content looking more natural and organic. When every single post on your
website is roughly similar in terms of its size and structure, then this actually
can be a bad thing from an SEO perspective. To Google, too much
consistency doesn’t look organic. It doesn’t look as though you wrote the
articles that way because that’s how you thought they should be – but rather it
looks like you wrote them that way because you thought it would help you
climb Google. In other words, it looks like you’re trying to game the system.
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Conversely, if your content varies in length, then it looks more as though
you’re focussed on delivering good content for your readers without concern
for how it might impact your SEO. Ironically, this is what Google wants you to
do!
Likewise, it is also better for your readers as they won’t always have time to
sit down and read a huge amount of text on a subject. With shorter bite-sized
information and longer posts, they can instead read at their own leisure and
pick the right post for the amount of time available to them.
Other Forms of Content and Advice for Scheduling
If you’re going to be posting other
types of content as well, then these
might adhere to slightly different
schedules. YouTube videos for
example will more likely be once a
week (this is fairly standard for
YouTube creators), while social
media posts should certainly be
multiple times a day.
Depending on your available time, the size of your brand and the platforms
you are working with, this might add up to a lot of work. In that case, you
might need to become a little more strategic in considering how you will go
about your marketing.
For example, you might find that you can benefit from scheduling posts.
WordPress itself and many social media platforms allow you to create posts
and then set them to post at a specific time. For those social media sites that
don’t support this feature, you can use external tools like IFTTT.com or
Buffer. This way, you will be able to ensure that your site has a steady flow of
new content, even on days when you run out of time or perhaps inspiration.
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Another tip is to consider creating a content marketing scheduling calendar.
This basically outlines all the content you need to create and shows you when
and how you will post it. This will help you to ensure your marketing strategy
fits within your routine and your schedule and can that way help you to avoid
missing posts or getting bogged down with other work.
Remember, if you don’t have time to write all the content yourself, then you
can always use other creators to help you find the time. You can do this either
by working with partners, or by using freelancing sites and webmaster forums
where people will advertise their skills. Make sure you pay a little more and
use only the very best content creators – anything less can hurt your brand.
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Chapter 4: Creating the Best Content
Adding content to your site alone is
not enough. What is absolutely
essential is that said content
represents value. If it does not, then
you might as well not bother.
So how do you ensure that the
content on your site is top quality
and that it is good enough to make
sure visitors want to keep returning and that they will consider buying from
you?
How to Write Good – The Anatomy of a Great Blog Post
Your aim is to provide value but what’s also important is that you do this in
the shortest time possible. This way, your blog post is even higher value.
Why? Because for a free piece of
writing, the only cost to the visitor is
time. The amount of time they spend
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reading your post is time out their day and time they could have spent
doing something else.
So if they manage to get all the same value from your blogpost but it takes
them half the time to get it, essentially they have gotten twice the value. This
is just as though they had purchased a product for half price that provided all
the same value as the full-price option.
This is true of all writing and so this should clue you in to the first hallmark of a
good writer: brevity. Or rather not brevity so much as efficiency. A good writer
will communicate what they need to say as quickly as possible with no need
for fancy wording or round-about sentences. If you want to make a sentence
better, often the best way to do this is to read through it and to remove the
superfluous words.
And this is especially true when it comes to the web in general and digital
marketing specifically. In other words: you need to be able to convey your
meaning in as few words as possible because people are in a constant rush
online and have been taught to have short attention spans. Online, we’re
used to getting the information we want immediately and not having to wait
around. Things are constantly flashing at us and we rarely spend more than a
few moments on a website. Efficiency then is key.
Does that mean that you should be typing in text-speak? Or just keeping
everything as brief as possible? Does that mean that there is no benefit to a
good vocabulary?
Far from it: because a good vocabulary actually allows you to say more with
less. Meanwhile, phrasing your sentences in particular ways – sometimes
less direct ways – will sometimes allow you to convey less obvious meaning.
For example, choosing one turn of phrase over another might mean that your
reader spends a little longer, but if it better describes the scene or better
conveys the tone you want your message to carry, then those words were not
wasted.
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The objective here is not to make your writing as short as possible but to
say as much as possible in the most efficient and entertaining manner.
Telling Stories
Writing your content in a manner that
is efficient is one strategy that is going
to help keep your readers on your
page and keep them reading. There
are others you can use too though and
this is where you need to start getting
strategic.
One crucial tip is to use storytelling wherever possible and wherever
appropriate. Storytelling means that you are making your content much
more personal and phrasing it as something that happened to you or to
someone you know.
So instead of talking about a technique to earn lots of money, you might
instead talk about how you earned lots of money via a certain technique.
This subtle shift will make anything you write about considerably more
engaging – to the point that it has often been described as ‘SEO for the
human brain’.
Storytelling is powerful because the brain has evolved to respond well to
stories. Stories allow us to imagine ourselves in the storyteller’s shoes which
makes whatever is being said much more engaging, emotionally resonant and
interesting. What’s more is that we like to hear how stories end: so if you start
your story off in an impactful way, you can bet your audience is going to keep
reading.
Telling stories will generally mean that your content adopts a more personal
tone, which in turn will be more colloquial. This also lends itself well to a
personal brand, which we’ll touch on in a moment.
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Either way though, make sure that your content is easy to read but that it
also matches the tone and the nature of the niche you are writing for. Blog
content is best when it is conversational, but only if that doesn’t undermine
your authority!
Providing Value
We’ve already discussed the importance of providing value, but let’s just ram
this idea home a little further: if you’re going to create any kind of blog post,
YouTube video or infographic, then it needs to offer some form of value.
Otherwise, you are just wasting everyone’s time!
So what does providing value really mean?
Usually, this means that you will be offering
information, entertainment, news or
education.
Whatever the case, it is critical that you do
this in a way that is creative and that offers
something unique. This is the key word and
this is the thing that many bloggers and
SEOs forget.
It’s easy to share information in a blog post. You could write about how to
do press ups or how to do basic SEO.
But at the end of the day, those posts won’t offer a ton of value. Why?
Because we’ve heard it all before. There are countless posts out there that
are very similar and that availability drives down your value.
On the other hand, if you can provide something completely new – how
about a new form of brain training that will result in greater physical
strength, or what about a powerful hack that can save internet marketers
money – then you will have
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